chapter Twelve
I’d once believed my bathroom was the pinkest place on Earth.
Sitting in the waiting area of Kleinfeld Bridal, I realized how wrong my assessment had been. The whole place was plush, posh and insanely girly. Too girly. If I didn’t still have the taste of lime in my mouth from my passionate wake-up call with Desmond, I thought I might taste bubble gum and cotton candy in the air.
“Hi, hi, hi,” Mercedes said, her breath hurried as she came into the room with Kellen behind her and plopped down on the couch beside me, kissing me on the cheek. “So sorry we’re late. There was an accident on Lexington, and we had a hell of a time getting out of the city.”
“Why didn’t we just go to a place in the city?” Brigit asked. She’d come with me and was a bundle of nerves since her meeting with the council the previous evening. They hadn’t made a decision yet, and I expected she would be on edge until they did. And I understood vampires well enough to know they wouldn’t be in any special hurry to reach a conclusion.
“Because if you have money and you’re getting married in New York, this is where you come for your dress,” Kellen replied matter-of-factly.
She was right. I didn’t care much for planning weddings or any of this crap, but even I knew if you wanted a good dress, you came to Kleinfeld. As luck had it, between my Tribunal income and my billionaire fiancé, I was in a unique position to afford whatever dress I wanted. Kimberly hadn’t even bothered to make appointments at other stores. This was our one-stop dress shop. I was going to find my dress here or I wouldn’t find it at all.
There was the added pressure that I had to find said dress soon because my wedding was in two weeks. I was asking for a miracle, but the great thing about an unlimited budget was it had a habit of making miracles happen.
With my bridal party nestled around me, we had one more person we were waiting for. Kimberly, her dark hair in a pristine bun, wearing pearls with her lilac twin set and khaki pencil skirt, walked into the waiting room laughing with the middle-aged woman at her side.
“Girls.” Kimberly clapped loudly to get our attention and showed off her too-white teeth like a shark might before it ate you. “Are we ready to have some fun?”
The girls in question all grumbled their excitement. It made me want to giggle. Poor Kimberly was probably used to women tripping over themselves to get at the dresses and parade around like satin-covered Barbie dolls. Instead she got me and my equally thrilled gaggle of bridesmaids—a cop, a vampire and a been-there-done-that socialite.
Unwilling to have the cheer beaten out of her, my wedding planner smiled wider and held out a hand to shift our attention to the woman next to her, who was wearing black from head to toe and an expression that was friendly but clearly meant business.
I suspected Kimberly had used the magic words—spare no expense.
“This is Olivia. She’ll be our consultant for the evening and has assured me we can take all the time we need.” On a typical day, Kleinfeld ran on an almost military schedule with appointments, trying to get brides in and out at a rapid-fire pace so they could make as many sales as possible in as short a window as possible. To throw appointment time into the wind meant Olivia and her managers believed my single purchase would make it worthwhile.
I wasn’t used to being the center of such focused attention. Olivia was counting on me to make her commission. I guess I’d better step up and be a good little bride. Once I had a dress, I could get the hell out of here, and that would be worth whatever cost was on the tag.
“All righty,” I said with a smile, pushing myself off the squishy loveseat. “Let’s get started.”
Kimberly and Olivia left Kellen, Brigit and Mercedes in a waiting area. In this part of the salon the pinkness of the waiting room vanished, replaced by white, white and more white. I’d never seen so much colorlessness in my life. Once I was seated in a closet-sized dressing room with Olivia and Kimberly, the barrage of questions began. Cut, color—apparently a dozen different kinds of white existed, from linen to ivory to gold to frigging virgin snow. I thought back to my nightmare, recalling all the layers of tulle and princessy poof, and described the exact opposite. I wanted slim and elegant.
“If I see poof, I won’t even try it on,” I warned Olivia.
“Of course.” Olivia nodded sagely, making notes on her clipboard. “I’d never dream of putting you in a big dress. You’re such a petite thing.”
Kimberly put in her two cents, obviously having a specific vision of my wedding. The words regal and sophisticated got used a lot, making me wonder how Lucas had spun this wedding to her. “I want her to look like a queen,” she concluded.
“She will be unforgettable,” Olivia promised.
Fifteen minutes later a half dozen plastic bags hung in the room. The dresses trapped inside made me think of full body bags in a morgue. That thought was followed shortly by, What the hell is wrong with me?
The first dress I tried on was a shade Olivia called blush, but I was nobody’s fool. It was pink and had a giant flower below my bustline. I gave Olivia an are you kidding me look, but she ignored me and presented me to Kimberly for inspection. The wedding planner regarded me with careful hesitation. She obviously didn’t want to give her opinion until she had assessed mine.
I glowered.
“Well…um…it’s nice.”
“Let’s go show the girls!” Olivia suggested, excitement overwhelming her.
I knew why. I’d spotted the price tag before she’d draped the rosy monstrosity over my head, and this cupcake topper of a dress was valued at a staggering twenty-five thousand dollars. I would pay that much to never look at it again.
I was paraded in front of the girls. Brigit loved it, to no one’s surprise, and Mercedes did her best to cover her laughter with a cough, but she coughed so much Olivia sent a subordinate to get Cedes some water, which made Kellen start sniggering.
I sighed and smiled at Olivia. “Let’s try something else.”
Three dresses later I was developing a lace rash and running out of patience. How could any bride in her right mind look forwards to this part of the experience? Even without the extra skirts and bustles, the dresses were heavy and cumbersome, the boning of each bodice threatened to cut off my breath, and all the white was making me feel more than a little guilty about the super-hot sex I’d had before I got here.
My impatience was starting to show. Every time Olivia brought a new dress to replace one I’d rejected, I would groan. To keep my girls from staging a revolt, someone had brought them a full bottle of Moët and a plate of finger sandwiches. I’m sure it was going to be added to my final costs, but I didn’t care as long as they were enjoying themselves.
Judging by the bubbling laughter that erupted every time I came out in a new dress, they were having way more fun than I was.
“I’m not good at this,” I complained to Kimberly when Olivia ducked out. “I’m not the kind of girl who feels her wedding is the best day of her life. I don’t care about this stuff.” I pointed to the wall of silk, satin and the godforsaken tulle.
Ignoring my uncharacteristic outburst of honesty, Kimberly smiled at me and patted my arm with a forced sisterly compassion. “It will be worth it when you see the look on Lucas’s face the first time he sees you.”
I tried to imagine the moment, but all I could bring to mind was Lucas’s cold eyes staring at Desmond’s dead body while he asked me, “What have you done?”
“I guess.”
Olivia returned a moment later, and soon I was trussed up again, itchy lace draped over my shoulder and my back exposed. The dress was pretty, but I wish someone had warned me how heavy lace was.
Trudging out, I stepped onto the platform in front of about ten thousand mirrors so the girls could get a look at what fifty-seven pounds of Venetian lace did for my five-foot-four frame. I turned so they could see the bare back.
Which was how I saw the gun.
The figure dressed all in black wouldn’t have stood out thanks to the uniform of all Kleinfeld employees, but the ski mask was a little out of the ordinary. As was the raised Beretta in the attacker’s gloved hand. There was a flash of light, followed by a muffled pop from the silencer. Without thinking, I dove for the most vulnerable person in range.
Olivia and I tumbled to the floor as the mirror exploded into a million pieces and Kimberly began to scream. Kellen joined in the chorus, obviously still scarred by the memory of what had happened on the highway earlier in the week. I, too, remembered that night as the pain in my shoulder responded to the sound of gunfire.
Mercedes—bless her police officer blood—had withdrawn a gun from an ankle holster and was ducked behind the loveseat with Brigit next to her. I rolled off Olivia and instructed her to stay the hell down. She was crying so hard I didn’t know if she heard me, but I hoped her common sense would give her the same instruction.
“Cedes,” I whispered loud enough for her to hear me as I hunkered down behind a mannequin. “I need my purse.”
She didn’t question me, just grabbed the large leather satchel and hurled it in my direction. With my beloved SIG 9mm in my hands, I immediately felt safer. With a bullet loaded in the chamber, the whole situation was less uncertain and foggy.
The salon was almost empty thanks to our late-evening appointment, but there were still quivering, whimpering masses of bridal white pressed to the floor and crying black-clad employees hiding in recessed closets, their hands covering their heads. I saw a young woman in a wedding dress get to her feet, and before I could shout out a warning she made a dash for the waiting room.
“F*ck, f*ck, f*ck,” I cursed as I rolled from my hiding place. The gunman was here for me, not these people, and I’d be damned if anyone died here tonight because of me. The women in the salon were here to prepare for the best day of their lives, and instead they were caught in a living nightmare.
This was what I did to people.
I wrestled with the skirt of my lace dress and jumped over the sofa, using the arm to propel myself higher, grateful for my bare feet. Another shot rang out an instant before I collided with the girl. We tumbled down in a mass of white fabric, and she screamed the way people can only if they’ve been shot—a high, keening wail.
I pushed off her and saw the tiniest bit of skin sheared from her arm, just above the elbow. If I hadn’t pushed her when I did, it would have hit her dead center in the chest. The gunman wasn’t aiming for flesh wounds.
“Shhh, shh, shush,” I whispered, trying to be soothing when I was really impatient with her wailing. “It’s a graze. You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.” She continued to scream, and it got worse when she saw the gun in my hand.
Heavy boot steps moved behind the wall. The woman and I were hidden only by a decorative divider where dresses were hung on display. I wrenched a veil off a mannequin nearby and wrapped the delicate fabric around her bloody arm. The front of her dress was splattered red, and the spray from her wound had left my own lace gown soiled with smears of blood. With the veil in place, I squeezed her hand and lied to her face. “I’m a cop,” I told her, and the screaming stopped almost instantly. “And you’re going to be fine.”
She nodded, still whimpering like an injured puppy.
“Put pressure on this.” I squeezed her arm gently. She winced but did as she was told. I stood, and she grasped at my free hand.
“Don’t go.”
“I have to.”
Pulling away, I moved to round the corner when another shot went off, but this one had no silencer and came from behind me. Mercedes had her elbows braced on the edge of the white loveseat and her backup revolver aimed at me.
But not at me, at the space six inches to my left where my would-be assailant cried out in pain and was calling her a stupid bitch as he dove for cover behind the dividing wall with one hand cupping his injured arm. I skirted the wall after him, my gun raised and ready, but when I got to the other side, there was nothing but a streak of blood on the ivory carpet. A thump and a wail called my attention back to the main room, and I followed spots of blood to the commotion.
The assassin, still wearing his ski mask, was holding one of the younger salesgirls in a chokehold with his gun nestled in her auburn hair. She clawed at his arm, black rivers of mascara staining her cheeks as she stared at me with a pleading urgency.
“Let the girl go,” I said, my own weapon trained on the sliver of ski mask visible from behind his hostage’s head.
“I don’t want her. I came for you.”
Dozens of gazes focused on me with new interest. I was the reason they were in this horror show, and now they all knew it.
“Too bad she’s not alone,” Mercedes said, her gun leveled at him from the side, where she could easily get a shot through his skull and still avoid hitting the girl. “NYPD, motherf*cker, you have the goddamned right to remain silent.”
Panic flashed in the gunman’s eyes. He was caught and he knew it. There were two guns trained on him. No way in hell was he getting out of this with his job complete. He took the gun off the salesgirl and shoved her at me using brutal force. I caught the girl before she fell and held her as she cried into my shoulder, never letting my aim waver.
Then, with a speed neither Mercedes nor I had anticipated, the failed assassin pressed his own weapon to the underside of his chin and pulled the trigger, raining a mist of pink, red and gray all over a display of haute couture gowns and the women hiding beneath them.